I figured I would post a follow up on how my Lumia 920's story, like those of the silver screen, had a fairly happy ending, complete with a new grey chassis.

After receiving a refund for the bike mount that wasn't strong enough to carry the phone it was designed for, I decided that I would swap out the battle-scarred body of my white Lumia 920 with a brand new grey one that I procured from eBay. Once it arrived, I set up my Surface tablet tuned the video that Windows Phone Central user Lemmiwinkles made that we used in a post we did about changing the body of your Lumia 920.

Armed with a mini multi-head screwdriver set, razor blade, and a hairdryer (Thankfully my wife has a full head of hair because I am balder than an old tire), I got to work, following Lemmiwinkles' video pretty much to a T. I was pretty nervous, considering this is my daily driver of a phone and I am only about 4 months into ownership, so I am not even close to being eligible for an upgrade.

To my surprise, the process was easy and everything went incredibly smoothly. Even the steps that the video said would likely be challenging did not present any difficulty. The screen assembly popped out of the chassis with a little light prying with a tiny flathead screwdriver, as did the USB jack. The headphone port came out after briefly heating it with the hairdryer.

Using the hairdryer to loosen up the adhesive on the headphone jack and wireless charging pad worked like a charm. However, the charging pad was the toughest part. I found it tricky to heat the adhesive enough for it to become workable and then carefully scrape the wireless charging pad up with the razor blade before it cooled down too much. I probably shouldn't have risked using a razor, and opted to go buy a plastic scraper or something, but I will admit I was too excited and impatient to do that.

When the charging pad first pulled up from the body, it did so without the adhesive and a tiny square of material from the center of the pad. This not how it happened in the video (my own fault), so freaked out a little, thinking that I killed the ability to charge wirelessly. My fears soon proved to be false once the phone was back in one piece and I heard that familiar "doop-a-doo" jingle when my Lumia hit the charger.

It was worth it

All in all, the whole swap took me about 20 minutes, including the time it took me to rewind and watch parts of the instruction video. It could have taken longer if I had run into trouble getting the phone apart or back together, but I was fortunate that I did not. It was a positive and rewarding experience to not only fix my busted Lumia 920, but also add a little panache with the matte grey.

I likely never would have given this a try had my phone not fallen off my bike onto the asphalt and been run over by four cars, so I suppose you can find some kind of silver lining here.

Thanks to Lemmiwinkles for his excellent video. And just remember, if you decide you give this a go with your Lumia 920, you do so at your own risk. Good luck!

It wasn't very difficult, but it was the toughest part of the process. It just took some coordination to heat it up and then scrape it up without wrecking anything. It may have been easier if I didn't use a razor. That made me nervous.

My black 920's been naked since day 1! It has a few light scarrs from some pretty abusive heavy handed use to be fair! I was thinking of doing exactly what you did cos i originally wanted the grey. Think its gonna have to be done, but I'll prob stay nude .. Because its a tank! and its a damn shame to cover it up.

I was thinking that he was lucky to only smash the plastic casing with that much glass surface sticking out like it does. I dropped mine once from waist level height and that glass bevel chipped right off on the corner. One would think the glass would be something people wanted to replace more often than the casing. But those casing changes are mostly for a new color makeover I guess.

Hollywood should make this into a movie. It has everything, love, loss, suspense, action, mystery, I mean I was on the edge of my seat. I'm thinking Brad Pitt for the lead and maybe a schwinn or huffy for the bicycle.

Hmm, I'm tempted to do this myself. My 920 flash stopped working, and the vibrate motor doesn't always work, so I was thinking about opening it up anyway, and that would be a perfect opportunity to attempt this.

Ah! Great to know. I was pretty excited about doing this myself but was too scared since it would void the 1-year warranty. I'm probably (definitely) going to attempt this later just for a bit of change from white but I'll wait for the warranty to die out first so a) I'll be less remorseful if I manage to screw it up and b) it'll give me a new excuse to get the latest Lumia if I really screw everything up.

My fiance has one of those on her 920. They must be the best 920 cases, but I don't like how hard the buttons are to operate with that thing. I have had my 920 since launch day without a case, and it still looks great.